“Women are too polite…”

discusses inequality in Ireland, her treatment on Tonight with Vincent Browne, and why some female politicians are so scared of feminism. Here’s a taster:

What do you think are the main obstacles to gender equality in Ireland and would you agree that Ireland still has a deeply chauvinist culture and that this too is a major factor underpinning the meek acceptance of gross injustice as a solution to what is essentially a crisis of and by the richest people?

KL: Ireland has an extremely chauvinist culture. I travel abroad a lot – in Northern Europe and have a lot of contacts outside the country. I have been a Visiting Professor and I work with many people in Germany and in France – which isn’t exactly devoid of sexism either. I also work in Brussels. I would say that we are going backwards because in terms of political representation it is self evident. We have only 16%. The two main parties have only 15% each and it’s almost nothing. The smaller parties have more. I think there are so many factors at play. Women are too polite. We have been socialised not to offend as women – don’t be too strident, don’t be too this or that. I suppose the backlash that you mention when I raised things that people don’t want to hear is one of the reasons that women will not put themselves forward because they are abused in a different way than men are abused. Men are abused for their ideas but they are not abused in terms of their appearance in the media if they dissent. Women are subjected to sexualised abuse. I think the political class in our society has no interest in this issue and women have not been resistant. We have been too conciliatory and accepting. My view is we should have marches on the Dáil – we should sit down in the middle of Dublin and stay there until something changes. We have no proper childcare, we have no infrastructure. Quebec in Canada has a very successful, non-profit childcare system because the women went out there and organised it. The Irish Women’s Council has no money, for example. There is no-one to organise it here. There have been all kinds of backlashes in the media against women who have dissented. The have actually been called nazis – or ‘feminazis’. A lot of women are afraid of that kind of abuse and it’s a form of violence against women that is accepted in Ireland.

MC: Lucinda Creighton recently felt the necessity to preface something she said with the qualifier “I’m no crazed feminist but…” – as if it would be a terrible thing to be thought of as a feminist.

KL: There are lots of sociological reasons that can explain that but if you have a young woman going into politics who is so fearful of that, what will she ever do? If she can’t defend herself as a woman, I’d be worried about what she will ever defend. You have to stand up for what you believe in and women are not equal to men in this country. For many, many years we have had second class citizenship. I’m not saying that I want a whole group of middle class women coming into politics. I’ve always said this – if we want gender balance we want it of men and women from different backgrounds which I think is as big an issue as gender. There is research from Norway and from a number of countries where they have gender balance, relatively speaking i.e. 40% and which shows that even women from conservative parties actually promote health, education and social welfare. It’s because they are closer to the vulnerable in society. It isn’t because women are morally superior to men – I would never say that, I think that’s nonsense. Or that men can’t care for children as well as women – of course they can. But because of the way our society is, women are the primary carers and a lot of the vulnerable people in society are cared for by women most of the time. Therefore policies that affect the vulnerable are more visible to women and they are more likely to vote for policies that are supportive of childcare, disability, healthcare and education. That is a simple empirical fact – observable from countries that have large numbers of women in their parliaments. I believe we will never get women in politics in sufficient numbers in this country without some sort of a quota system.

MC: I’ve argued before that in any other circumstance where you have such an obvious imbalance or social lack it’s only natural for some sort of remedial action to be taken to restore the situation to health.

KL: We need only have it for a period of time to overcome the problem, otherwise it’s not going to happen.

MC: And yet very disappointingly women in the Dáil – over half of them – are saying they are against gender quotas.

KL: Well you only have to look at who they are, a lot of them. Many of the women who succeed in politics in this country have family associations in politics and they get selected on the basis of their family connections – and that in my view is a form of a quota. They have already benefited from the family quota and they should remember that. And many of the others have benefited from their money. I’m sorry, but there are some women with wealthy backgrounds and that has greatly helped them. You’ve probably been to privileged schools and enjoyed all the privileges of your class and therefore of course you don’t need a quota because you belong to the privileged upper middle class. So bully for you! The vast majority of women do not. Any woman from a poor community down the country hasn’t a hope.

Very interesting. I note that she backs up her own statement about women being too polite by prefacing her valid comment on women from wealthy backgrounds with an apology: “I’m sorry, but there are some women with wealthy backgrounds and that has greatly helped them.”!

Does she take for granted that increased social welfare and government intervention in the market is a good thing? I question that. So it seems unwise for her to tie socialism to feminism: she’s saying to people who support free markets that they should vote against women.

Shane, Kathleen Lynch is Professor of Equality Studies and countries who spend more on providing universal health and education systems are more equal. That is a good thing. Equating government expenditure with socialism is a misnomer. Socialism is about the democratic control of capital. You can have market economies with much higher levels of universal services.

The point about non-profit childcare is also not mutually exclusive of government support. There has been decreased funding of community based non-profit childcare which impacts particularly on poorer women.

I think as women we could do more. My experience in other countries is that there is greater solidarity among women talking about feminist concerns. What is it about Ireland they we don’t have that solidarity with feminism? It’s not like we don’t need it.

I’d certainly like to live in a country with a high degree of equality, but I’m concerned about the costs of achieving that through government intervention. Some right-wingers argue that government interventions to boost equality have a net negative effect on the economy, leaving the poor people POORER in more equal countries in the long run than the poor in more unequal countries.

Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson’s recent book The Spirit Level blames income inequality for a wide range of social ills. But I question some of their methodology: in the end I was unconvinced and I suspect that material poverty is more important than relative poverty.

In college we were bombarded with left-wing views on things, to the point that right-wingers were dismissed off-hand as naive and ignorant! Only when I left college and started debating with hardcore conservatives, libertarians and anarchists did I begin to see that some of them had pretty compelling arguments. The immediate positive effects of social spending or regulation tend to be clear, but long-term consequences are often hidden. It’s not surprising to me that many of the countries used as positive examples by left-wingers, like Sweden and Germany, have started shifting to the right as their economies struggled to carry the weight of social democracy.

But anyway, that’s all drifting off-topic. I’m just surprised that she makes this connection between sex and politics, implying that right-wing voters should vote against women!

Women everywhere seem too scared to speak up/out; we are attacked from all sides for being stroppy or privileged or overly aggressive or non-representative. I am Canadian, living in the U.S. 22 years, and I see a cultural difference in Canadian women’s willingness and ability to speak out publicly, in the media and elsewhere, and in NY, where I live. I was raised, socialized and rewarded (thank God) for being brave enough to (judiciously) speak my mind and defend (hotly, when needed) my opinions and ideas. I see fewer American women as happy to jump in and do battle.

I do wonder how many women are fearful of the verbal abuse (likely) and show up anyway. If you’re ready for verbal fisticuffs and relish it, you’ve got an advantage. But sexism is toxic — and I see a lot more of it in NY (!) than I ever did in Toronto. How ironic, in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

I hope you don’t mind my sharing a link, as I blogged on this topic this week.

Good piece, mostly, but it’s a pity she hasn’t chosen to address any of the arguments against quotas and instead attacks the women making them. I have serious concerns – based in part on experience – against the efficacy of quotas as doing anything other than creating a veneer of equality on a system that is structurally incapable of achieving it. I’m open to being proven wrong, but I need to see, you know, proof, not invective.

I mean for starters, what makes her think that if quotas were imposed they wouldn’t just be filled by more Mary Coughlans and Lucinda Creightons.

I was in a lecture with Kathleen only last week – she is very pro quotas but doesn’t necessarily feel that quotas address quite a lot of other issues. Kathleens take on it would be that there should be quotas within quotas meaning there should be more representation of a broad range of groups – working class women, travellers, disabled women, lesbians

Also – yes she would probably agree with you that quotas in parties may have the result you mentioned – Indeed she told us she had been in Poland and their experience was that women related to male politicians with right wing views got put forward once quotas were introduced